"She is with Robert."
"She may not always be with Robert alone."
Jane felt her face flush. She knew her husband; knew that he was not one to speak unless he had some reason for doing so. "Edgar! why do you say this? Do you know anything? Have you seen Margaret?"
"I saw her a quarter of an hour ago——"
"With Robert?" interrupted Jane, more impulsively than she was in the habit of speaking.
"Robert was by her side. But she was walking arm in arm with Mr. Murray."
Jane did not much like the information. This Mr. Murray was in the same house as Robert, holding a better position. Robert had occasionally brought him home, and he had taken tea with them. Mrs. Halliburton felt surprised at Margaret: it appeared, to her well-regulated mind, very like a clandestine proceeding. What would she have said, or thought, had she known that Margaret and Mr. Murray were in the habit of thus walking together constantly? Robert's being with them afforded no sufficient excuse.
Later they saw Margaret coming home with Robert alone. He left her at the door as usual, and then hastened away to his own home. Jane said nothing then, but she went to Margaret's room that evening.
"Oh, Edgar has been bringing home tales, has he?" was Margaret's answer, when the ice was broken; and her defiant tone brought Jane hardly knew what of dismay to her ear. "I saw him staring at us."
"Margaret!" gasped Jane, "what can have come to you? You are completely changed; you—you seem to speak no longer as a lady."